The Sad Trajectory of Orrin Hatch

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When Orrin Hatch’s career in the United States Senate ends on Jan. 3, 2019, it will have spanned an audacious 42 years, or seven full terms. Assuming he completes his final term, Mr. Hatch will become the sixth-longest-serving senator ever.

His service truly has been epochal. Unfortunately, the epoch has not been a happy one. Mr. Hatch’s career reflects the sad trajectory of our times, from a Congress where legislators had differences but actually tried to legislate, to one in which legislators — especially Republicans, terrified of facing a well-financed primary from the right — do nothing of the sort.

Mr. Hatch was elected in 1976 in one of the most improbable Senate victories, still, in recent American history. He was a Mormon, but a Pittsburgher; he had moved to Salt Lake City only in 1969 (though he had earlier done his undergraduate work at Brigham Young University, in Provo). He had no political experience and few political contacts when, the day before the deadline, this complete unknown filed his papers of candidacy for the mighty United States Senate.

The incumbent was — and how strange does this sound today? — a Utah Democrat. Frank Moss had won the seat freakishly in 1958, when the Republicans split and ran two candidates. But he’d gotten himself re-elected twice and was a key leader on consumer issues. In 1976, Utah was still a centrist enough state that Moss had reason to think he’d win a fourth term.

Four Republicans vied for the right to run against him. Mr. Hatch was the most conservative of the four. He had the backing of W. Cleon Skousen, a Utah-based far-right conspiracist whose pamphlets included the 1963 classic “The Communist Attack on the John Birch Society.” At the last minute in the Republican primary, Mr. Hatch finagled the backing of Ronald Reagan, who initially sent a statement in support of “Warren” Hatch.

Mr. Hatch’s rhetoric, said the wife of the Republican establishment candidate, “seemed to appeal to those who were slightly estranged from the general society.” But he energized the state’s conservative primary voters and won. In the general, he bested a befuddled Moss, who’d never given a moment’s thought to the prospect that Mr. Hatch could emerge as his opponent.

Today, a senator sent to Washington on those credentials would be expected to want to burn the place down. But Mr. Hatch did what senators did in those days: He governed. Across party lines. His most famous association, of course, was with Edward M. Kennedy. They worked together on biomedical research, child care, AIDS and civil rights for the disabled.

Most important, they teamed up in 1997 on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, the same program that’s on the block today. A New York Times reporter, taking stock of Mr. Hatch’s decision to work with Kennedy on the bill, wrote at the time that “Senator Hatch noted he had recently been described as a ‘latter-day liberal’ in National Review, a conservative journal. And he did not reject that description.”

Enough of that Orrin Hatch survived into 2009, when he spoke movingly at Kennedy’s funeral. His personal love for his dear friend and the Kennedy family showed through palpably. But times were changing. In 2010, the Tea Party wave swept the Republican Party. One who drowned in it was Mr. Hatch’s Utah colleague, the Republican Senator Robert Bennett, defeated by the Tea Party-backed Mike Lee in a primary fight that shook other establishment conservatives to their core.

Mr. Hatch was up for re-election in 2012. He faced a Tea Party challenger, Dan Liljenquist. He knew what he had to do. He opposed virtually every item on Barack Obama’s agenda. He ratcheted up the rhetoric. In 2007, Freedom Works, a right-wing pressure group, rated him at an abysmal 25 percent. By 2011, Mr. Hatch had brought that up to 88 percent. He’d burnished his right-wing credentials enough so that Sarah Palin endorsed him in 2012. He beat Mr. Liljenquist nearly two to one.

I remember in 2013 some liberals thought, well, now that he’s survived that, and this is possibly his last term, maybe he’ll go back to being the old Hatch. Uh … no. He had once said Merrick Garland would be a “consensus nominee” for the Supreme Court. By 2016, the senator, a member of the Judiciary Committee, was a key figure in arguing that Mr. Garland didn’t deserve a hearing. He once cared about the power of tech monopolies. Last year, that changed.

All this culminated in an exchange with the Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, last November at a committee meeting where the tax cut was being discussed, when Mr. Brown, between the lines, was trying to remind Mr. Hatch of the legislator he was 20 years ago, and Mr. Hatch didn’t seem very interested. “I’ve got a reputation of having worked together with Democrats,” Mr. Hatch said.

“Let’s start with CHIP,” Mr. Brown replied, referring to the children’s health program.

“We’re not starting with CHIP.”

It’s not that Mr. Hatch is a bad man. He’s surely a decent man, trapped in an indecent dynamic. And now, the smart bet is that he will be replaced by another decent man, Mitt Romney. Mr. Romney once called President Trump “a phony, a fraud.” The arc of Mr. Hatch’s career suggests that Mr. Romney will use different nouns two years hence, if not much sooner.